


laisse béton

by leamandine



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Angst, Avoiding talking about feelings, Conversations, Definitely hurt, Explicit Language, Gen, Mostly awkward conversations, Perhaps some comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 18:23:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8411791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leamandine/pseuds/leamandine
Summary: A few conversations between Kevin and Jean through the years. Or, an attempt to explore one of the most complicated relationship in the series.





	

-I-

He approached the door cautiously, moving towards it inch by inch until his curled fingers hovered just above it's black surface. The rooms were largely soundproof, but with the team at an away game and Riko off with the Master, only two Ravens remained. Kevin could hear Jean behind the door. He wished he couldn't.

He knocked. 

Of course, Jean did not answer the door. He was not permitted that luxury, to be able to answer to lock against visitors as he wished. That right to determine visitors wasn't for him, wasn't for property. Kevin walked in. The knock was courtesy.

Jean scrambled to turn around, choking back a pained yelp as he stood from the end of his bed and backed himself against the wall. Kevin regarded him without a blink. All of it--Jean's vividly black eye and burst blood vessel, split lip still peppered with little flecks of blood and the way he cradled his left wrist--was normal, par for the course. They were fifteen; this has been considered normal for a long time. 

Jean's grey eyes flickered with suspicion, with anxiety. "He sent you?" he asked quickly, voice hoarse like he'd suffered some kind of theist injury. "I'm about to go run drills. I-I was just taking a minute-,"

"-Riko didn't send me," Kevin cut him off. Jean fell silent, looking only incrementally relieved. "I-um..." Kevin felt uncomfortable being in this room. Jean had to share with an athlete nearly four years his senior. It seemed inappropriate. It probably was. When they'd been even younger, Kevin and Jean had shared a room but then Riko had insisted Kevin share with him. 

Jean was growing more anxious looking for every second Kevin didn't speak. He was not, compared to Kevin, a person riddled with pathological anxiety. Jean was reactive. He needed to be anticipate moves made by others in order to withstand them. His fear was practical, necessary, Darwinian. 

"I was thinking we could restart the lessons," Kevin concluded finally, his eyes focusing on a spot on the floor. "I could say I'm running extra drills with you, like we used to do."

Jean frowned. "Restart French lessons?" Kevin nodded. "That is an idiotic idea!" Jean spat. "You are delusional! When he found out last time do you know what he did to me?" Jean's voice broke a little but his anger grew more ferocious to compensate. "You expect me to risk my own life? I won't do it. I already taught you a lot. I won't risk it."

Kevin's heart sank a little but he had expected this. "I've been working on Riko, telling him I need to spend more time with you. He's amenable. He's asked me to work you really hard on these new drills the Master put together. We can do that while you teach me more French."

Jean scoffed, yanking down on his dark hair as he turned his torso away, hiding his damaged eye from view. "Why do you care so much about learning French?" he demanded. "You don't need it." 

Kevin wanted to say: this is for you. This has always been for you. You have nothing else except for his language, for memories of your life Before This. I am rapidly losing ways to connect to you. I want to help you remain human, not property. I want to help. This is the only way I know how. 

Kevin said, "This isn't a question, Jean. We're running those drills because the Master ordered us to. And you are going to teach me more French while we do it. We'll start tonight. Be ready in half an hour."

-II-

Kevin had noticed in the locker room after they changed out after a scrimmage. It was Kevin’s twentieth birthday, so Riko had planned some kind of celebration later. Most of the team was discussing what kind of food would be served, and whether there would be strippers like last at Riko’s birthday party, but Kevin had noticed the new scars on Jean’s wrists and ignored everyone else. 

He walked over to grab Jean before he could step into the shower. As usual, Jean kept to himself in the locker room, preferring to spend as little time in the company of the entire team as possible. Kevin grasped his bicep and Jean flinched away instinctively. When he saw that it was Kevin he relaxed slightly in his grip but averted his eyes. “What?” he hissed. “I need to shower.” 

“You want to explain this?” Kevin whispered back, volume low but intensity high. He glanced to make sure no one was eavesdropping. He could hear Riko berating one of the freshman and knew that would capture everyone’s attention, buying them some time. Kevin moved his thumb to hover over the crisscrossing scars over Jean’s wrists, some still bright red. “I thought you’d stopped that. What the fuck is this?”

Jean paled and Kevin could hear his heart start to race underneath his fingers. “Don’t tell him,” Jean said immediately, his eyes finally meeting Kevin’s. “Don’t tell him-,”

“-Answer my question,” Kevin snapped, clenching down on his grip. Jean cringed. “You can’t hurt yourself, Jean. You can’t be doing that. Why would—why would you hurt yourself? He already hurts you enough.”

“I didn’t think you noticed,” Jean fired back, wrenching his arm away and holding it tight to his body to hide the scars from view. Kevin felt like he’d gotten punched and he opened his mouth to speak, but he didn’t get the chance. “Why do you care? You don’t care what he does to me. Why do you care what I do to me?”

There was an explosion of laughter out in the locker room. “Jean,” Kevin said. “Shut the fuck up. Of course I care. If you fuck up your wrists, you might not be able to play. And-,”

“-Exy.” Jean interrupted, and there was something in his tone that made it suddenly impossible for Kevin to breathe. A flat, deadened quality. “Don’t worry,” Jean said softly a few moments later. “I know what I can take.” 

He stepped into the shower, closed the door and turned on the water. Soon the room filled with steam and Kevin finally regained the ability to move. He walked back into the locker room, ears ringing with the sound of Riko’s raucous laughter.

-III- 

It was January. Cold. Bitter. There was no warmth in the air, in the wind, in the way they sat, shoulder-to-shoulder, finishing peanut butter sandwiches. 

“They aren’t coming back, are they?”

Jean was twelve. So was Kevin. Kevin glanced sideways at him, kicking his sneakers against the stone wall they sat atop. It overlooked part of campus, their backs to the Nest. It was a rare break from exy and their homeschooling because Riko and the Master were away. “Who?” he asked, even though he knew. This wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation, though it had been occurring less and less frequently.

“My mom and dad. They aren’t coming back, are they?”

Kevin sighed. “No,” he said. “Because of-of the deal they made. They can’t. Well, technically you can’t go back. Or something. I don’t know how it works.”

Jean curled his long legs underneath himself as he discarded the crusts of his bread, tossing them towards eager crows a few feet away. “I know,” he whispered. 

Kevin wondered if he was sad. “Don’t be sad,” he said. “Someday, we’re going to be the best exy players in the world. That’s what this is all about.”

Jean stared at the crows pecking at the crusts of his bread. “They aren’t coming back,” he said again, chewing over the words in his mouth. 

Kevin didn’t know what to say. "Want to go down to the court?" he asked.

-IV-

Abby led him and Renee to the back guest room. Renee kept giving him sideways glances, all of which Kevin ignored pointedly. His heart was beyond racing. He felt ill. “Remember,” said Renee gently as Abby deposited them in front of the door with a pointed look. “You are the person he trusts most in the world. No matter what has happened. He looks up to you.”

“You’re wrong,” Kevin said hoarsely, clenching and unclenching his hands. “That’s not true anymore. Not since I left. Probably way sooner than that, actually.”

“Believe me,” said Renee, smiling softly. “It’s still true.” She pushed open the door. 

Kevin did not waste time assessing Jean’s injuries. He’d seen them before, in different combinations and to different degrees. He froze in the doorway. Renee slipped past him to sit at Jean’s bedside, waking him up gently as she took his hand. Kevin’s mind was spinning so fast, his memory shooting him scenes from over the years of violence and aggression and abandonment, and then he tried to reconcile that with the way Jean jolted awake, cried out in a pained agony, and then relaxed under Renee’s gentle touch. 

Kevin blinked slowly. He found himself quite unable to move. 

“Kevin.” 

Renee’s voice was soft, patient. Kevin jumped. For some reason, it startled him. 

Kevin moved forward, sinking down on the edge of Jean’s bed in a robotic, quite out-of-body way. He felt like a doll being moved into position. Renee smiled sweetly again. “I’ll be right outside,” she promised, and then she was out of the room. 

Jean closed his eyes, a few tears escaping past his broken nose. Kevin felt a lump in his own throat, horrifyingly. “I have to go back,” Jean said in French, his words slurred, his accent dense, almost unintelligible. But Kevin could understand. 

“I know,” he answered, also in French. “But we—I—can’t let you. It…he’ll kill you, Jean.” 

Jean laughed humorlessly, choking it out past his lips. “That would be good,” he murmured. “That’s what I want. That’s all I’ve wanted for a long time. Since before you left. Since-,”

“-Stop it,” Kevin snapped, and suddenly a flaming anger seized him. “Stop it. I got away; Neil got away; and now so have you. If you don’t want to live, that’s too fucking bad. I won’t let—I’m not going to let you go back there.”

Jean’s eyes opened slightly, finding Kevin. “You left,” he whispered.

“I know,” said Kevin, and the back of his eyes burned. “I know I left. But-,” he stopped, grating for control over his voice, over his throat, over his roiling stomach. Jean’s eyes had slipped shut again, his breathing shallow, wheezing, insubstantial. “-But I’m here. This is my home now. And-and you can stay with us until we figure out what to do.”

Jean was silent for so long that Kevin thought he’d fallen unconscious. “I have to go back. I’m not anyone. I belong to him. There’s nothing else for me.”

Kevin shook his head. With certainty, he said, “We’ll find something.” 

They’d find something.


End file.
